by Catherine Pugh, Esq. | July 2020
Racism is not “ours.” It is yours. And it is yours exclusively. Black folks did not build Black hate, and we certainly did not build it with you. Black folks are not The Bad Actor in Black hate. We can only work to convince The Bad Actor to stop acting badly. Black folks cannot kill Black hate in its cradle. Black hate breeds in places we cannot reach. If we could have killed it, we would have killed it. Trust that it is not our apathy about our own lives that keeps us dying in the streets. Worse, racism disappears when we try to look it in the eye, lost in a sea of nonsensical protestations:
• “I don’t see color”: Why are we talking about racism then?
• “I’m not racist”: Ooookayyyy, whatever it is you call this, you’re still getting fired for it. …
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Colorblindness] [Systemic Racism] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Privilege] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [White Defensiveness] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Individual Change] [-ing While Black] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability]
Resource Links Tagged with "“All Lives Matter”"
‘The Epitome of White Privilege’: White Woman Who Spit on Black Protester Might Have Hate Crime Charge Dropped
by Zack Linly | July 2021
Some white people are racist, and some white racists are just nasty AF. On Jan. 6—the same day as the whiny wypipo rebellion at the U.S. Capitol—Black woman Keren Prescott was leading a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Connecticut Capitol building when she told an “all lives matter”-spewing white woman, Yuliya Gilshteyn, to “back up,” because she wasn’t wearing a face mask. Gilshteyn wasn’t even asked to back away because she was yet another fragile-ass melanin-not who still, in 2021, is pretending not to understand that the words “Black lives matter” do not, by any rule of the English language, imply that other lives don’t. All Prescott wanted was to get this maskless white woman TF out of her face – instead, Gilshteyn spat on her.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Privilege] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [White Culture] [White Supremacy]
When White People Stonewall; If White People Really Care about Their Relationships with BIPOC, They Need to Learn to Discuss Racism in an Open and Honest Way
by Savannah Worley | September 2021
I had a short romantic relationship with a white guy. He was cute, funny, and he didn’t get insecure when I helped him beat certain bosses in video games. But when I opened up to him about my past experiences with racism, he responded in ways a lot of white men do. “Well, I’m Irish! We suffered discrimination too!” “I experienced bullying in school because I wore glasses.” “Are you sure what you experienced was racism?” “I’m poor, so I can’t have privilege.”
I eventually sat him down and tried to educate him on white supremacy and white privilege (even though he could have done his own research). After I was done, all he said was, “Okay.” That was it. He didn’t engage in the discussion at all. I was left feeling unheard and ignored. Shortly after our discussion, he started to make jokes about slavery and started calling me his “sassy Black lady.” Among other reasons, I decided to dump him. His being cute and funny just wasn’t enough for me.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Systemic Racism] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Defensiveness] [White Privilege] [White Blindness] [White Fragility/Tears] [Microaggressions] [Implicit Bias] [White Supremacy] [Silencing POC]
Performative Activism Is the New ‘Color-Blind’ Band-Aid for White Fragility; White People Embracing Hashtags Won’t Help Us Destroy Anti-Black Racism. Here’s Why.
by Maia Niguel Hoskin, Ph.D. | June 2020
Because Whites are the nonracialized majority, they live in an insulated environment of racial protection and comfort, which makes them unable to tolerate racial stress. Whiteness scholar Robin DiAngelo refers to this as White fragility and says this about it: Once White people are confronted with racial stress, it triggers various defensive responses in them, such as anger, guilt, silence, outward displays of emotion, defensiveness, and shutting down. Some argue that color-blindness has been used as a way for Whites to accommodate their racial fragility and ease their guilt. Feelings of shame and defensiveness associated with racial injustice can be minimized if its existence is denied. Like color-blindness, performative activism is manipulative and maintains systems of racial privilege by Whites centering their desire to seek comfort over addressing racial injustice.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2020’s] [Myths] [White Fragility/Tears] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [White Supremacy] [Social Justice] [Policing] [Black Lives Matter] [History] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Anti-Racism]
Mass. among States with Highest Levels of White Supremacist Propaganda in 2020, Report Says
by Aaron Morrison | March 2021
White supremacist propaganda reached alarming levels across the U.S. in 2020, according to a new report that the Anti-Defamation League provided to The Associated Press. … Massachusetts was among states that saw the highest levels, also including Texas, Washington, California, New Jersey, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, according to the report. The propaganda appeared in every state except Hawaii.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [Justice System] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [“All Lives Matter”] [Accountability]
Full Stop: Casually Anti-Black Behaviors You Need to Quit NOW
by Sharai | February 2021
I was hoping that being socially distanced this February would let us avoid some of the issues that make me angry every year. While these behaviors are year-round problems they seem to dramatically increase every February because a lot of white people want to take part in Black History Month but don’t get how these behaviors come across. I believe this stems from society not knowing how to talk about race and I have created a quick list from things I’ve clocked on social media last week. Hopefully, this list helps those of you who are serious about doing better.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [History] [Black Lives Matter] [White Privilege] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism]
There Is No Such Thing as a ‘White Ally’ — “TNSWA” Part I
by Catherine Pugh, Esq. | June 2020
The logic behind the expression “White Ally” makes about as much sense as me going into your room, folding your affirmations and putting them neatly away, cleaning all the introspection off of your mirror, gathering your feelings for the laundry, and then you pick up your golliwog, put it away, and announce triumphantly, “We’re in this together, and I am totally committed to helping.” Mmmm, not so much with that.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [Racial Terrorism] [Black Lives Matter] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [Cognitive Dissonance] [Social Justice] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Defensiveness] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Accountability] [Policing] [-ing While Black] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
White Silence on Social Media: Why Not Saying Anything is Actually Saying a Lot
by Christina Capatides | June 2020
…”It’s a very painful kind of silence because it removes our voice,” she said. “It doesn’t allow us to express our very specific pain… No one would ever go to a breast cancer walk and criticize them for talking about breast cancer. You wouldn’t walk up to someone who has experience as a breast cancer survivor or someone who’s lost someone from breast cancer, and say, ‘How dare you talk about breast cancer? Why not talk about colon cancer? How dare you exclude other cancers?'” Rachel Lindsay, who famously broke barriers as the first black Bachelorette, said she is taking note of which white friends and public figures have gone silent. And she believes that, in the digital age, it is the duty of public figures to speak out.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [White Defensiveness] [White Fragility/Tears] [Systemic Racism] [Anti-Racism] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts]
The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility; The Popular Book Aims to Combat Racism but Talks Down to Black People.
by John McWhorter| July 2020
“ … herein is the real problem with White Fragility. DiAngelo does not see fit to address why all of this agonizing soul-searching is necessary to forging change in society. One might ask just how a people can be poised for making change when they have been taught that pretty much anything they say or think is racist and thus antithetical to the good. What end does all this self-mortification serve? Impatient with such questions, DiAngelo insists that “wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ‘solutions’” is a “foundation of white fragility.” In other words, for DiAngelo, the whole point is the suffering. And note the scare quotes around solutions, as if wanting such a thing were somehow ridiculous. A corollary question is why Black people need to be treated the way DiAngelo assumes we do. The very assumption is deeply condescending to all proud Black people. In my life, racism has affected me now and then at the margins, in very occasional social ways, but has had no effect on my access to societal resources; if anything, it has made them more available to me than they would have been otherwise. Nor should anyone dismiss me as a rara avis. Being middle class, upwardly mobile, and Black has been quite common during my existence since the mid-1960s, and to deny this is to assert that affirmative action for Black people did not work.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [Individual Change] [2020’s] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Defensiveness] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [Anti-Racism] [Myths] [“All Lives Matter”] [Denial]
What We Get Wrong about ‘People of Color’
by Jason Parham | November 2019
The phrase turns a plural into a singular, an action that betrays all the ways we have come to understand contemporary identity.
This past summer, in one of the most bizarre applications, Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, who is white and Republican, described himself as a “person of color” when discussing Trump’s comments about four Democratic congresswomen. “It’s time to stop fixating on our differences—particularly our superficial ones,” he said.
TAGS: [Assumptions] [2010’s] [Systemic Racism] [Prison System] [Politics] [Racial Covenants] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy]
[White Defensiveness] [White Blindness] [Denial] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Culture]
There Is No Such Thing as a ‘White Ally’ — “TNSWA” Part II
by Catherine Pugh, Esq. | July 2020
Part II of TNSWA series. Racism is not mine, it’s yours, and it’s not called “help” when it’s your mess we’re cleaning. Part I is available here. I get stuck when I try to see the “White Ally” label as something bigger than a White woobie. Normally, that’s no problem, but this woobie comes at the expense of Black living. “White Ally” remains a term I neither use nor care for. Originally, I kept my own counsel here because my objections felt cranky. “White Ally” was a deft marketing plan recasting potential “haters” as heroes, but hardly a reason to engage. As it happens, I have no love for “White Privilege” either and shrugged it off from within the same genre of indifference. “White Privilege” was our ironic tongue-click when you acted like the child who commits patricide and then begs an orphan’s mercy. As with the other, it merited little attention. Then Travis and George McMichael executed Ahmaud Arbery, and everything changed. It is from this place that There Is No Such Thing as a White Ally was born. So many questions to ask ourselves.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Individual Change] [Accountability] [Definitions] [Systemic Racism] [White Blindness] [White Privilege] [Anti-Racism] [-ing While Black] [Police Shootings] [Policing] [White Fragility/Tears] [“All Lives Matter”] [Advocacy]
The Sugarcoated Language of White Fragility
by Anna Kegler | Updated December 2017
*The language we use to talk about racism is obviously distorted, a big clue that something is being hidden. It’s pretty easy to pinpoint the source: most White people can’t handle talking about racism. We flail. We don’t understand the subject, we get really uncomfortable, and we either clam up because we don’t want to say the wrong thing, or we bust out the whitesplaining (FYI, this is a best-case scenario. It can be much worse).
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [White Supremacy] [Implicit Bias] [White Fragility/Tears] [“All Lives Matter”]
The Real Reason White People Say ‘All Lives Matter’ – Why “Black” Makes Us Uncomfortable
by John Halstead | July 2017
“Dear fellow white people, … notice that no one was saying ‘All Lives Matter’ before people started saying ‘Black Lives Matter.’ So ‘All Lives Matter’ is a response to ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Apparently, something about the statement “Black Lives Matter” makes us uncomfortable.”
TAGS: [Individual Change] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Implicit Racism] [Colorblindness] [Black Lives Matter] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Culture] [2010’s]
To Understand White Liberal Racism, Read These Private Emails
by Isolde Raftery | June 2017
On a gray day last October, teachers across Seattle wore a shirt that read BLACK LIVES MATTER. They knew there might be criticism. John Muir Elementary in south Seattle had done this in September and received a bomb threat and hate mail from across the U.S. But they did, and the day was, by most accounts, uneventful. Some kids got it – most didn’t. Just another school day. And then, a backlash, but this time not from outsiders. White parents from the city’s tonier neighborhoods wrote to their principals to say they were displeased. A Black Lives Matter day was too militant, too political and too confusing for their young kids, they said.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [Black Lives Matter] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Culture]
White Niceness as the Enemy of Black Liberation
by Elle Dowd | January 2018
“White people love niceness, but we fail to see that our ideas about polite society are not very nice at all. They serve instead to preserve a system that is criminalizing people of color and dehumanizing white people with our callous indifference. They act to protect institutions built on killing the bodies of people of color to the detriment of our own souls. We say we value niceness, but what we really value is being in charge of what that looks like and when it’s appropriate, by our own standards. We value control.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2010’s] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [“All Lives Matter”] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability]
Two White Women Launch ‘White Nonsense Roundup’ to Unburden People of Color (VIDEO)
by Egberto Willies | July 2016
Racial strife has exploded in America once again. Two Washington state women believe ‘White Nonsense Roundup’ could play a part in educating and healing and “to unburden people of color from social media ‘race-splainig.’” I titled my Sunday DailyKOS front page article with the provocative headline “Black Lives Matter needs white bodies” for a very particular reason. I figured using the ambiguous term would get more eyeballs to a story that needed more visibility. The feedback from the article was much more than I expected, good, bad, and indifferent. One particular email piqued my interest. The email suggested that I get in touch with Terri Kempton and Layla Tromble in Washington state. These two women launched the Facebook page ‘White Nonsense Roundup‘ hoping to be a part of the solution……
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Accountability] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Individual Change] [“All Lives Matter”] [White Fragility/Tears] [White Blindness]
This is What White People Can Do to Support #BlackLivesMatter
by Sally Kohn | August 2015
Educate yourselves, put your bodies in the streets and help dismantle white supremacy …In his searing new book, “Between the World and Me,” Ta-Nehisi Coates implies that it’s not his job — or, by extension the job of other black voices or leaders — to coach white folks, let alone worry about their feelings. Which it’s not. The whole point is that we white people should be the ones thinking more about black people — their feelings, their experience and their reality, which can be dramatically different than our own. But at the same time, Coates concludes his text noting that structural racism won’t change until white people change.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2010’s] [White Privilege] [Systemic Racism] [Accountability] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [Black Lives Matter] [“All Lives Matter”] [Individual Change]
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Dear White People
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Dear White People
Being Allies
Reparations
Spiritual Foundations
Public Displays
Performance Art
Workshops
Activist Resources
Assessment Tools
History
Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Introduction
Definitions
Facts
Maps
Dear White People
Being Allies
Reparations
Spiritual Foundations
Public Displays
Performance Art
Workshops
Activist Resources
Assessment Tools
History
Appropriation / Aggression
White Privilege / Supremacy
Introduction
Definitions
Facts